At the very glimpse or thought of this word, many people cringe. I’ve gotta confess that I don’t understand the animosity.

I’ve been less than a year at my job, and it’s becoming clear why we’re encouraged to write specifications of our features from so many different angles. It’s nearly impossible for someone else to pick up your project without any sort of communication between the originating party and the new party. Textual, visual, and even audio/visual documentation is an relatively easy, time-efficient way to commute with your users, customers, and future maintainers.

Everyone seems to hate doing creating docs though, as if they admit that it is a necessary evil. I must be in the minority since I enjoy it! I’m in the process of documenting a molecular computation suite and how it’s used. I learn more about my own process while documenting and it really causes me to question my own workflow and see how it can be optimized.